Lack of lockdown, open borders, and no vaccination in sight: is Bosnia and Herzegovina a control group?

Bosnia and Herzegovina is among ten countries in the world with the highest mortality rate due to COVID-19 infection. Lack of lockdown, open borders, high mortality rate, no herd immunity, no vaccination plan, and strong domestic anti-vaccination movement present serious COVID-19 concerns in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In such circumstances, we set out to study if the population is willing to receive the vaccine. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 10,471 adults in Bosnia and Herzegovina to assess the attitude of participants toward COVID-19 vaccination. Using a logistic regression model, we assessed the associations of sociodemographic characteristics with vaccine rejection, reasons for vaccine hesitancy, preferred vaccine manufacturer, and information sources. Surprisingly, only 25.7% of respondents indicated they would like to get a COVID-19 vaccine, while 74.3% of respondents were either hesitant or completely rejected vaccination. The vaccine acceptance increased with increasing age, education, and income level. Major motivation of pro-vaccination behaviour was intention to achieve collective immunity (30.1%), while the leading incentive for vaccine refusal was deficiency of clinical data (30.2%). The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is shown to be eightfold more preferred vaccine compared to the other manufacturers. For the first time, vaccine acceptance among health care professionals has been reported, where only 39.4% of healthcare professionals expressed willingness to get vaccinated. With the high share of the population unwilling to vaccinate, governmental impotence in securing the vaccines supplies, combined with the lack of any lockdown measures suggests that Bosnia and Herzegovina is unlikely to put COVID-19 pandemic under control in near future.